RARWRITER.COM™                                )

________________

FEATUREDARTISTS:

Click here to go to the Featured Artist page: 

Photos, streaming MP3s and more!!!

ESSAYS:  Click here

_______________

___________

MUSIC REVIEWS
(click here):

RAR reviews LPs from Michael ONeill (Ain't Leavin' Your Love), Sarah Stanley (Tuesday Girl), Hilary York (In The Dark), Tom Corwin and Tim Hockenberry (Mostly Dylan), The Boxmasters (Modbilly), Mad Buffalo (Wilderness), and others. Also read reviews from RARWRITER contributors Doug Strobel and Diana Olson.

BOOK REVIEWS AND MORE (click here): This edition, RAR takes a long look at Philip K. Dick, Edgar Allan Poe, Samuel Clemens and The Iowa Writer's Workshop. Read earlier RAR reviews, including a look back at David Halberstam's The Reckoning, and Alan Greenspan's book "The Age of Turbulence."

______________

ARTIST INDEX:

Click here to go to the Index page to find the artists profiled on the Links at RARWRITER.

J. Vermeer -  "The Artist In His Studio"

"THE LINKS AT RARWRITER" - Links to information on creative communities of the following cities, regions and countries:

At Large

Austin

Australia

Boston

Canada

Chicago

Colorado

Europe

Miami/Florida

Japan

Los Angeles

Minnesota

Nashville

New Orleans/Louisiana

New York City

Philadelphia

Phoenix

San Diego

San Francisco

Scandanavia

Seattle

United Kingdom

ARCHIVES: Selected features from past editions.

RARADIO: Click here to go to the RARadio page to hear innovative acts from across the spectrum of musical genres.

POLITICAL LINKS -

points of view not necessarily endorsed by RARWRITER.com

ATLAS SHRUGS

FACTCHECK.ORG

FEATURED LINKS:

The Gibson guitar folks have a Lifestyle zine section on their website that is well worth checking. Click here.

________________

RARWRITER.com Annual "State of the Union" Report 2008-2009.

Click here for information about RARWRITER.com viewership and the further development of the RARWRITER enterprise.

RARWRITER
CONTRIBUTOR PROSPECTUS

RARWRITER.com is exploding with new readers, new artist profiles, and new business opportunities. Would you like to become involved as an editorial contributor? If you are a great writer or photographer with particular knowledge of your creative community, and you are looking for publishing credits, contact us at Rick@RARWRITER.com for a copy of the RARWRITER Contributor Prospectus to learn what involvement can mean for you.-RAR

THE LOST PROPHETS

GALLOWS

www.kerrang.com

Britain's reigning heavy metal magazine, the 26-year old Kerrang! (German for "boner"), has been aging a bit, or so one could infer from the publication's close connection with a genre that produced most of its stars a couple decades ago.

Kerrang! overtook the venerable New Musical Express several years ago as the most widely circulated music magazine in the U.K., but someone there in the front office must have given some thought to the risks of stagnation. Over the past two years Kerrang! has been remaking itself into a more broadly ranging vehicle for promoting today's rock. In fact, the magazine has played a significant role in raising the profile of such new scene stealers as non-metal contenders Enter Shikari, The Lost Prophets and Gallows. Circulation numbers remain strong, but this shift in focus has been a mixed bag, as one might imagine, for the publication in terms of pleasing long-time readers. The magazine that championed thrash and glam metal acts like Mötley Crüe, Slayer, Metallica and Poison has gone a little emo of late.

Kerrang!'s thorny dilemma was evident in the 2007 awards, a mixture of reverence to the "glorious" pasts of Judas Priest, Trent Reznor and The Deftones, to tips of the hat for mag favorites The Lost Prophets, selected Best British Band for the second year running. That is Lost Prophets frontman Ian Watkins there on the right, counting the victories.

SPIRIT OF INDEPENDENCE

ENTER SHIKARI

CLASSIC SONGWRITER

DEFTONES

BEST VIDEO

Fall Out Boy 'This Ain't A Scene'

HALL OF FAME AWARD

JUDAS PRIEST

KERRANG ICON AWARD

NINE INCH NAILS

HARD ROCK HERO

MACHINE HEAD

BEST ALBUM

Machine Head 'The Blackening'

BEST SINGLE

30 SECONDS TO MARS 'The Kill'

BEST LIVE BAND

ENTER SHIKARI

BEST INTERNATIONAL BAND

MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE

BEST BRITISH BAND

LOST PROPHETS

BEST NEW BAND

MADINA LAKE

BEST BRITISH NEWCOMER

GALLOWS

Go to http://blog.kerrangawards.com/winners.html  for a completing accounting of the Kerrang Magazine Rock Awards.

why is that little poser shit here, GO BACK TO AMERICA BITCH - y in fuck is she here get lost!!!!!! - Get home where you belong. - i dont like that person - eurgh hate her! - she makes me puke! *puking* - She´s a bitch just like her sister!!

One may also find anti-Ashley Simpson opinions expressed on the Kerrang blog. (And you think you want to be famous...)

The Coral is an engaging and energetic live act, where their disjointed recording focus can be redirected and used as a dynamic tool. The bandmembers are (clockwise from far left): John Duffy (percussion), Paul Duffy ( bass), Bill Ryder (lead guitar), Lee Southall (rhythm guitar), James Skelly (guitar). Drummer Ian Skully and Organist Nick Power are not pictured.

The Coral's can be heard at their MySpace site at www.myspace.com/thecoral. Samples from their new album can be heard by clicking here.

SELFISH CUNT MP3S:

Selfish Cunt MP3s can be heard at their MySpace site at www.myspace.com/ixnewyork.

Selfish Cunt's 2004 release was titled No Wicked Heart Shall Prosper and is available at an Import price.

ROOTS MANUVA

www.rootsmanuva.co.uk/rootsmanuva/

Rodney Smith has been ROOTS MANUVA for 13 years now, since assuming the identity in 1994 while still collaborating with Blak Twang, and since his 1999 breakthrough hit "Brand New Second Hand" he has been the sine qua non of British hip-hop. That distinction doesn't necessarily translate into huge commercial success, partly because the big U.S. hip-hop market doesn't have a British accent and does have a long reach. Roots' omnipresence in the British market has been largely gained, since the turn of the century, through his hook-ups with a group of other eclectic artists (including The Cinematic Orchestra, Beth Orton, Leftfield, the Gorillaz and Coldcut).

Roots' other signature approach has been to take his reggae techno. The son of Jamaican parents, the Stockwell (South London) native blends his instinctive island feel with dance club electronics. His rich voice lives on the back end of beats like a sucker punch, but Roots isn't a gangster. He's a head. He is going to go where few have gone before, blending political commentary with romantic melodic refrains and doing it with a disarming house rawness. It is exotic stuff, experimental in ways that one might expect of Miles Davis, were Miles still around. 

ROOTS MANUVA MP3S:

Roots Manuva MP3s can be heard at their MySpace site at www.myspace.com/rootsmanuva .

LEFT: Roots Manuva's 2006 release Alternately Deep

RIGHT: Roots Manuva LPs (clockwise from top left) - Awfully Deep (2005), Dub Come Save Me (2002), Run Come Save Me (2001), and Brand New Second Hand (1999).

www.superfurry.com/

After seven studio albums, the Welsh rockers SUPER FURRY ANIMALS, or SFA as their fans know them, are starting to move on. Their last album for Epic Records, in 2005, was a democratic affair, with Gruff Rhys being only one of five members contributing songs and lead vocals. Love Kraft was a pretty relaxed affair that charted only "Lazer Beam" (which you can hear on the band's MySpace site). As Gruff went off the record a solo LP for Rough Trade, and Cian Ciaran and Dafydd leuan off on projects of their own, SFA's cult status was intact, maybe not growing.

SFA was taking on almost mythical status, however, in their dealings with Coca-Cola. The band got attention in 2005 for turning down nearly $2 million in fees for the use of "Hello Sunshine" (which can also be heard on their MySpace site). They came upon information that Coca-Cola was using violence against unionized plantation workers in Columbia - a charge that was, of course, denied - but SFA waved Coke off; a noble act.

Remember when R.E.M. was sort of in the duldrums then released their Monster album, with "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" and all that glorious noise? There is a sense among people who care about this sort of thing that Super Furry Animals is about to deliver one of those.

IS IT JUST THE SONG? (PROBABLY)

SFA is fascinating in that they have sung a significant amount of their material in their native Welsh. This is culturally appealing and fits with the band's socially conscious image (though how sensitive would one really need to be to hesitate to profit from murder?), but it must be commercially limiting, no? Or is it that SFA is capable of beautiful performance, but not really of penning flat-out great tunes? They always feel heavy on gimmickry to me. A song like "Ice Hockey Hair" doesn't really need it and adding it sounds incidental. Great vocals, though, like The Beatles in high flight. "Lazer Beam" and "Hello Sunshine," by comparison, sound repetitive and uninspired (like the chorus out on "Ice Hockey Hair"). A lot of dicking around on an SFA record, until it becomes maddeningly self-indulgent. Unfortunately, that is also part of the legacy of this band. - RAR

SFA MP3s can be heard from their MySpace site at www.myspace.com/superfurry

www.bethgibbons.com

We will not be saved from Edith Piaf, at least not by Beth Gibbons. In 2003 the former Portishead singer gave us an album with Paul Webb that veered from early '60s Brazilian jazz to a weird mimicry that recalled Piaf, but really sounded more like Jimmy Scott. Woh! Was anyone ready for that?

Beth Gibbons does have a carefully worn voice. You can hardly find a reference to her bluesy style that doesn't also include a reference to her smoking. Let's hope she gets over that because aging hipsters need a soundtrack too. Beth Gibbons, like another Beth - Orten - owns one of those instruments that is capable of melting away that wall that wants to prevail between artist and listener. You sense that she seeks to explore new turf for the new world. I'm not totally certain she'll find her new world voice in the past.

Beth Gibbons MP3s can be heard from their MySpace site at www.myspace.com/bethgibbonsoutofseason  

Beth Gibbons and former Talk Talk member Paul Webb collaborated on the 2003 release Out of Season.

broadcast.uk.net

Someone wrote that the music of BROADCAST sounds beamed in from another planet. That's the result of pretty obvious tinkering with electronic toys to achieve a moog-like accompaniment to their essentially '60s pop sound. (They are a natural for the Austin Powers soundtrack, to which they have contributed "The Book Lovers.")

The Birmingham electronica band is fronted by Trish Keenan, who is possessed of one of the most beautiful instruments in modern pop. The band, over its 10-year run, has pretty much dissolved to become only Trish and bassist/collaborator James Cargill. But what do you need beyond her and a rhythm track?

Broadcast MP3s can be heard from their MySpace site at www.myspace.com/broadcastuk  

Broadcast's Releases counterclockwise from top left: The Future Crayon (2006), Tender Buttons (2005), Ha Ha Sound (2003), The Noise Made By People (2000), Work and Non Work ( 1997), 

"The Broadcast vision is the meeting of human emotion in the electronic world. The optimistic belief in the compatibility of man and machine. A nature and nurture approach to music. The potential of folk, nursery rhyme and electronics to provoke memory and imagination. The past set in the future. A retrospective lyric set in an electronic description of an organic word."

- Broadcast's description of their "memory music" from their MySpace site

REDISCOVERING MORRISSEY

The confession of rediscovery is damning. 

It isn't like Morrissey had exactly gone missing, but I had. It was much to my own loss. As a music fan and a fan of wordsmithing in general, there is no one else really like Morrissey. His collaborations with Johnny Marr were perfect. The Smiths were the only band since The Beatles that struck some transcendent chord in me that could be experienced but not explained, even as people commonly shared it. And no, it's not a gay thing. One of the things that I found uplifting about Morrissey - and some might imagine this would be a short list - was his weird, vulnerable, defiant self awareness. And, of course, his humorous way of broadcasting it. 

I followed him - even supported him at the cash register - into his solo career and recognized the sound changes, but found no real drop-off from the wit and fury and romantic musicality of his Smith's work. He took on more of an edge-guitar sound Post-Marr. Still, we had all heard a lot of Morrissey by Vauxhall and I in 1994. The LP did well in Britain but Morrissey never achieved more than a cult following in the states. Maybe Morrissey felt it was time to recede. During his long absence from studio work, I would hear of him playing some unlikely place in Sonoma County. I would feel an urge to go, because I've rarely seen Morrissey at all, and never "live," but never went. I'm not a big nostalgia guy and Morrissey seemed like a piece of the past.

Morrissey returned as a recording artist in 2004 refreshingly unchanged in his basic Morrissey-ness. He is still witty, acerbic, and the writer-guy we have always known, so maybe it shouldn't come as a surprise that time has served him well. The older Morrissey is still without classification, sort of a one-off species. It is the jarringly smooth blending of his menacing physical nature and his sensitive and openly-shared inner self that makes him an exercise in performance art. 

Morrissey seems to be living a role in which perverse producers have cast a dock worker as a gay thespian and instructed him to emote. The knockout is he does it so damned well! 

It continues to take me off guard. Over the years, Morrissey has been a good source of publicly provocative - some say "racist" -  statements, and often there are blunt references in his lyrics sprinkled among all the clever tenderness. The contradictions inform his every move, yet somehow his performances elicit  empathy. Morrissey flings his strapping big body around in dramatic movements, like a guy at home singing into his fist in front of his mirror when nobody's watching. He seems bullied by the force of the sound to strike odd poses and try broad gestures. He has one of those uncle faces that are frozen into a work mug and can't really do other than frown, so he is at odds with his own humor and he simmers. He is Stanley Kowalski living out dramatically, and Terry Malloy. He seems untouchable, not really a guy you want to cuddle. But then there is that voice, which has always been charismatic, but which has now honeyed into a smooth, assured melodic instrument. It is a neat trick to croon over a distortion-laden guitar band, and it takes real singer chops, which Morrissey now has in spades. It feels like our Manchester boy is back and in a package built to last. Like old pros do, Morrissey has gotten really good.

One wonders, in the Internet / niche market age, if enough people can be focused on any one guy for us to recognize, any longer, when the next legend is being made; the next Dylan, Judy Garland or Billie Holliday. Or the next Montgomery Clift, who is the only man I can think of who begins to share Morrissey's essential strangeness.

Morrissey would be my nominee for Outstanding Legend in the Making, were there such an honor. Recognized or not, the world seems in perspective when Morrissey's benignly tortured soul is acting out in full force and his peculiar artistry is revealed. It feels great to have him back. 

- RAR

CLICK HERE TO RETURN TO THE ARTIST NEWS PAGE

©Rick Alan Rice (RAR), November, 2009